Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Over the last several years it has become increasingly clear that the earth is not warming according to the IPCC model predictions (projections ) . Both Hansen and Trenberth recognise the problem.Hansen suggests that Chinese pollution is counter balancing the expected surface warming and that this surface warming pause might continue for several decades to come.By contrast Trenberth suggests that the missing heat has gone mainly into the oceans and that the warming pause could last for 15 - 50 years. In addition Trenberth in a presentation at :

several predictions for future cooling were made - summarised as follows.
1. Significant temperature drop at about 2016-17

2. Possible unusual cold snap 2021-22
3. Built in cooling trend until at least 2024
4. Temperature Hadsst3 moving average anomaly 2035 - 0.15
5. Temperature Hadsst3 moving average anomaly 2100 - 0.5
6. General Conclusion – by 2100 all the 20th century temperature rise will have been reversed,
7. By 2650 earth could possibly be back to the depths of the little ice age.
8. The effect of increasing CO2 emissions will be minor but beneficial - they may slightly ameliorate the forecast cooling and help maintain crop yields .
9.Warning !! There are some signs in the Livingston and Penn Solar data that a sudden drop to the Maunder Minimum Little Ice Age temperatures could be imminent – with a much more rapid and economically disruptive cooling than that forecast above which may turn out to be a best case scenario.

Most western governments have developed economically costly climate and energy policies based on the premise that CO2 sensitivity is about 3 degrees, and that CAGW can be avoided by engineering anthropogenic CO2 emissions to keep the temperature increase no more than 2 degrees.These policies make no sense if CO2 is not the main climate driver and if, in fact, the earth is entering an extended cooling spell because of declining solar activity.
As two of the main advocates of the CAGW paradigm and in view of their recent statements on the possible extended time span of the warming pause it would clarify the situation for policy makers and everyone else if they could see their way clear to putting forward in its most simple form their current predictions along the lines of points 1-9 above or most importantly, and at least, items 4 and 5 - their most likely values for the Hadsst3 moving average (5 year) in 2035 and 2100.
The other points might merit a one or two word comment eg "absolutely not" or "possibly"
Drs Hansen and Trenberth your response to this request would be most welcome . Thanks in advance Norman Page.

From the data and papers linked to on these earlier posts I have drawn on a few basic premises on which the new forecasts rely.

1 .The IPCC climate models on which the entire CO2 phobia depends ignore basic common sense and show poor scientific judgement and so were, and are, so badly structured as to be inherently useless for temperature prediction. Climate sensitivity to doubling CO2 is probably 1 degree or less. The GH analogy conceptually misleads both the climate scientists and the general public. A much better analogy for the atmosphere is an holey insulating blanket with holes of varying size at differnt times according to the size and number of Tropcal Cyclone convection cells. These holes provide a substantial variable negative feedback to warming which is not included in the climate models. see Trenberthhttp://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/outreach/proceedings/cdw31_proceedings/S6_05_Kevin_Trenberth_NCAR.ppt

2.The best way of distinguishing the main climate trends and drivers is by power spectrum and wavelet analysis of any time series which might be pertinent and correlation of these power spectra to distinguish forcings and feed backs.
3.A small number of time series are useful proxies for and can usefully and economically represent the trends in and the drivers of a large proportion of the past global climate variabilty and point the way to the likely future.It is not necessary to know the precise mechanisms and time series interactions which produce these time series observations in order to use them for successful prediction.
4.The present analysis which looks ahead to 2035 and 2100 is based on a few simple ideas and empirical observations..
a) There has been no net warming since 1997 with CO2 up 8+% .Global Temperatures have been declining since 2003-4 The period from 2003- 2005 represents a peak in both the 60 year PDO cycle and in a millennial solar cycle.
b) Because of the thermal inertia of the oceans and the more extreme regional high frequency variability of the land data the Global SST data are the most useful representation of the overall global climate trend.
c)Not withstanding b) above and indeed because of the greater variability of the NH temperatures the currently most useful representation of temperature trends over the last millennial solar cycle for practical and conceptual purposes ie hockey stick or non hockey stick is
Christiansen and Ljungqvist 2012 fig5 at:http://www.clim-past.net/8/765/2012/cp-8-765-2012.pdf see Fig1 below. - describe it how you will

d) It is not unreasonable to suggest that temperature trends from 2000 - 3000 AD could well repeat the pattern of trends from 1000- 2000. AD
e)The temperature trends in the first +/- 100 years after the peak are likely to be the reverse of the trends in the +/- 100 years before the peak and the Hadsst3 data set Figs 2 and 3 is a generally accepted representation of the latter trend.
f)The main climate driver is the sun . Incoming solar radiation is modulated by the Milankovitch orbital cycles and by variations in solar "activity" manifested by changes in GCR flux at the earth,by changes in EUV radiation, changes in the frequency and energy of CMEs and Proton events ,changes in solar wind speed and changes in TSI.Incredibly ,only the small TSI change is considered in the IPCC models-.The change in albedo caused by the GCR- cloud iris effect and the change in atmospheric chemistry caused by UV variations are probably more important than TSI itself.
g)A lunar influence is also evident in the temperature power spectrum.
h )The Neutron count can act as a useful proxy for solar "activity" particularly as the instrumental data can be projected back via the 10Be flux for millions of years..

2.Analysis and Forecast.

This post provides a revised version of the post on 1/22/13 "Global Cooling Timing and Amount (NH)" In this earlier post future temperature changes were estimated with reference to Christiansen and Ljungqvist 2012 fig5

FIG 1

Here I make the same assumption that the current temperature peak is an approximate repeat of the +/- 1000 AD solar cycle related temperature peak (Fig1 ) .The simplest assumption for trends following the peak is that the downslope to about 2650 AD may well look like the downslope from 1000 to1650.Naturally predictions beyond the 30 years which coincides with a PDO declining temperature trend would be increasingly more speculative.
Using the HADSST 3 data as a go-by (figs 2 and 3) produces the following estimates .

The rising trend peaks out at 2003-5 Fig2..A rise occurred from 1975 - 2003-5. We might therefore look for a similar cooling from 2005 to 2035 The average peak temperature has an Hadsst 3 anomaly of about +0.38 . The rise from 1975 was from about -0.15 to +0.38 = +0.53 . and thus we might look for a similar decline in global SSTs temperatures to - 0.15 by 2035. This would coincide well with the current 30 year cooling phase of the PDO. More speculatively we might similarly estimate a recovery to + 0.1 by about 2060 followed by further Global cooling to - 0.5 by 2100 - equivalent to the 1910 temperature.
See the Hadley chart Fig3 below from http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/HadSST3.pdf

Fig 3

Of course these numbers relate to the general trend- during the downtrend we would expect higher frequency variabilty in temperature highs and lows to the same extent as seen in Fig 2. but both would generally decline until 2035.

These forecasts and trends are generally consistent with the broad trends in the Oulu neutron count since 1964 Fig4 which I suggest may well be considerd as a key Solar Activity Proxy -- SAP. It seems that there is a +/- 12 year lag between the SAP and the temperature. see Fig3 in Usoskin et alhttp://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2005ESASP.560...19U.

The decline in the count minima from solar cycles 20-22 ie from 1969 - 1991 corresponds roughly to the temperature rise from the early 1980s to the 2003-5 temperature peak . It also matches well with the increase in the count of hours of sunshine during the same period dicussed by Wang et al http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/12/9581/2012/acp-12-9581-2012.pdf
which may well represent an open phase of the iris effect.

The relatively higher counts at the cycle 23 and especially the cycle 24 neutron minima troughs (solar cycle SSN peaks) suggest a continuing downtrend in temperatures to at least 2024.
There was a secular change in the related Ap index in 2004-5 which could presage a sharp temperature drop in about 2016-17 and the Oulu data show an increase in the neutron count also in 2004- 5 which might indicate the same thing and which is alredy built in to the system.

Fig 4

It is possible that the record 20th century peak in the 2009 count might indicate a real cold snap in 2021-22.

3. Summary

1 Significant temperature drop at about 2016-17 2 Possible unusual cold snap 2021-22 3 Built in cooling trend until at least 2024 4 Temperature Hadsst3 moving average anomaly 2035 - 0.15 5 Temperature Hadsst3 moving average anomaly 2100 - 0.5 6 General Conclusion - by 2100 all the 20th century temperature rise will have been reversed, 7 By 2650 earth could possibly be back to the depths of the little ice age. 8 The effect of increasing CO2 emissions will be minor but beneficial - they may slightly ameliorate the forecast cooling and help maintain crop yields . 9 Warning !! There are some signs in the Livingston and Penn Solar data that a sudden drop to the Maunder Minimum Little Ice Age temperatures could be imminent - with a much more rapid and economically disruptive cooling than that forecast above which may turn out to be a best case scenario.